Posted by Tim on April 05, 2002 at 03:22:23:
From the Dallas Morning News:
Killer of gas clerk gets death penalty
Family of victim in Sept. 11 retaliation is happy with sentence
04/05/2002
By TIM WYATT / The Dallas Morning News
A Dallas County jury handed the death penalty Thursday to a Dallas man who claimed that a series of shootings last fall that killed two immigrants and maimed another were retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mark Anthony Stroman, 33, received the death sentence after three days of trial testimony and less than four hours of jury deliberations for the Oct. 4 robbery and slaying of Vasudev Patel, a 49-year-old gas station attendant in Mesquite.
As state District Judge Henry Wade Jr. read the verdict, Mr. Stroman nodded his head and then said: "Thank you, sir." He waved briefly at family members while being led out of the courtroom.
Mr. Stroman also is charged with two Dallas shootings that killed convenience store owner Waqar Hasan, 46, on Sept. 15, and blinded Rais Bhuiyan in one eye at a Pleasant Grove gas station a week later. Mr. Stroman was not on trial in the September shootings but confessed to all three after his Oct. 5 arrest by Mesquite police.
The widows of Mr. Patel and Mr. Hasan left the court without commenting. A family member, John Patel, said that his family was "very happy with the verdict" and that the brutality of the killings called for the death penalty.
Teressa Talamantez said her brother-in-law "didn't do right" by attacking the three men, "but now [Mr. Stroman's] children are victims of this."
"It's just more sadness," Ms. Talamantez said. "American justice failed again. It's just not right."
Prosecutor Greg Davis said the attacks were committed out of "pure hatred" that claimed two lives and devastated victims' families.
Mr. Stroman "attempted to say he was a patriot," Mr. Davis said. "He was anything but a patriot. What he is, is just a common vigilante."
'Chaotic mind'
Defense attorney Jim Oatman had no comment after the verdict, but during closing arguments he told jurors that until the World Trade Center attack his client only talked of being a white separatist. After Sept. 11, he said, Mr. Stroman's actions turned violent for what his "chaotic mind" twisted into a patriotic act.
"He thought he was being a hero," Mr. Oatman argued. "He thought that America would praise him and pin a medal on his chest."
The prosecution vehemently disagreed.
"If there are any true Americans here, it's these people," he said, pointing to the family members of Mr. Stroman's victims seated in the gallery. "Not this man."
Mr. Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant and father of four, moved to Dallas last year from New Jersey to open a convenience store in Pleasant Grove. He was shot once in the head while working behind the grill of Mom's Grocery, but no money was taken from an open cash register.
Mr. Bhuiyan emigrated from Bangladesh in 1999. He worked at a Texaco station in Far East Dallas, where he was blinded in one eye by a single blast by Mr. Stroman from a .410-gauge derringer. He testified Wednesday that Mr. Stroman shot him in the face and walked out without taking money from an open register.
Mr. Patel was a naturalized U.S. citizen who worked 18-hour days at the Shell station on Big Town Boulevard to support his wife and two children. Mr. Stroman shot him in the chest with a .44-caliber revolver.